I am putting this in the general questions area because I am looking for facts or statistics - not debate - although, as usual, pelple can post what they want anyway.
No. Though I do agree that poor people will commit more crimes in general. I think the rate of crime has to do with upbringing not race. Just as many white people commit crimes as black/mexicans/ect.
Why do you think they would commit more crimes just because their skin is darker?
I don’t think the OP insinuated that people of a certain skin color are more likely to commit crimes at all, Amedeus.
We hear the “poverty=crime” argument all the time. It’d be nice to have some actual stats.
I have the 1999 Uniform Crime Reports right here in front of me… they break it down by race and socio-economic condition, but not both at the same time, unfortunately.
My message is in my subject line
Actually a very good question in terms of gathering data, I presume in response to my note in the GD.
Attention to pitfalls in regards to collecting and using the data however:
(a) must recall to control for different social circumstances, i.e. dense urban areas versus rural or sub-urban. One may reasonably ask the question of whether or not these will effect the data, so one needs to break out not only by race but also by factors such as urbanization which may effect. Simplistically considering race as a unit is likely to produce distorted and ultimately inaccurate results. Considering race in the context of income tranches, regional data and type of urbanization or lack is necessary to discover actual factors at play.
(b) second, one may wish to specify what sorts of crime. In my original intervention I noted that I believe data reflects correlations between some kinds of crime and poverty. It is a bit of analytal blindness to only consider low-end crime as crime. However, if we state clearly that we’re considering X types of crimes then we have some degree of clarity and precision.
The way I read the OP is that it is asking about different socio-economic groups’ crime rates without making the eroneous supposition that membership of a particular group has a genetic basis. Whilst this is a question fraught with difficultiy and dangers, it still seems a fair-enough question.
Collounsbury’s post make me think that I’m missing context here. (With apologies to Scylla) Linkety link link?
A couple links:
This one states that Blacks are twice as likely to commit crimes as whites. Does not say anything about poor blacks and poor whites though. http://www.amren.com/colrcrim.html
This report finds that Asians consistently commit the smallest number of crimes, followed by whites, Hispanics commit violent crime at approximately three times the white rate, and blacks are five to eight times more violent.
Of course this doesn’t answer the poor blacks vs poor whites, and I am having a tough time trying to find something with some facts on what percentage of poor folks commit crimes compared to middle income or the rich.
I would wager that the majority of crimes dome from the very poor to the lower middle class. Depending on the type of crimes. It would seem only common sense that the poor are more likely to commit certain crimes (Theft, robbery, assult, and vandalism to name a few).
Here is a few that I found;
Here is an interesting article with some nice facts. It suggests that the net robberies in America add up to 15.3 billion dollars, while white-collar embezellments add up to 200 billion!
I’ll keep looking though.
[[This one states that Blacks are twice as likely to commit crimes as whites.]]
I don’t know if this statistic is accurate (and/or if it’s looking at population rates or just numbers), but it seems like there’s a different connotation here from a statement like, “Twice as many crimes are committed by Blacks as compared to Whites.”
The first statement sounds to me like it’s saying that any individual African American is more likely to commit a crime than any individual White. I’d also add that poverty doesn’t cause people to commit crimes but rather in some cases the same dysfunction that might cause some people to be poor might also cause them to be criminals, drug addicts or dysfunctional in a variety of ways. This is not a generalization about people who suffer from poverty.
I fear your search is doomed. With sufficient support, we can amass lots of data re: crime and punishment, we can even filter out for other demographics such as the ones Collounsbury suggests.
We can even scour the specific laws to insure that the results are not intentionally skewed.
there are some things, however, we cannot factor out:
-
Level of attention by the police in investigation and patrol. For example, there may be more arrests at a certain park due to the police being dispatched there specifically to ‘clear it out’ 'cause the local magistrate is having a party there.
-
Even if you leveled the playing field all across the lines, all you’d come up with is the folks who got caught for reported crimes.
all crime is not reported.
all crime is not solved.
Some crimes recieve much more police attention at solving (homicide, rape for example) than others.
I know a lot of police officers and I’ve ridden with a few over the years, especially at night after work and I would say ‘Yes’ to the OP.
Not just because they’re Black either, but because of the sociological morals, peer pressures, conditions, attitude and higher community crime rate.
Blacks who are poor and in a Black poor community seem convinced by the current broadcast image of the media in all of it’s forms, that they are tough guys, and it does not help at all when their peers find it much easier to make money through criminal activities than through regular jobs. Add to that the accepted status image of having spent time in jail and the accepted manly image of having a knife or bullet scar and things start getting dangerous.
Then you figure in the almost continuously generating hatred of Whites, often for no other reason than because others hate them, and the stubborn attitude to remain separate, even to keeping a Black ghetto language, which is heavily reinforced by accusing other Blacks who do not act black as being ‘Uncle Toms’ and treating them as traitors to their race.
Crime becomes a status symbol and a way of life. Getting harassed by the cops shows that the person is ‘one of them.’ Blacks in these communities turn on each other much faster than the other races do because that is what ‘you do.’ Trust no one.
It’s a hellish and self-defeating lifestyle. Black women are much more prone to pull a knife on Black men and other Black women that in other racial poor concentrations and cut someone, though they rarely will use a gun.
When the Black poverty community is broken up and mixed into a multiracial community with higher concentrations of Whites, Asians, and Indians, so that they are not the majority race, the percentage of Black crimes falls.
In my opinion, living in an intense Black cluster, Blacks reinforce anti-white and anti-other race tendencies among themselves, as well as accepting antisocial behavior towards each other as normal, creating an artificial ‘Black’ environment and reinforcing it by peer pressure and trying to actively prevent change from within that might seem ‘White.’
I believe Berdollos was prompted by my comments in this thread
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=68675
on racial profiling.
In re the citation to higher rate of black crime than white crime, this is precisely what I wanted to address:
Without an understanding of the socio-economic factors we end up with a mirage focused on the racial. Now, the racial factor may indeed by quite important. In fact I would be surprised if we did not find some quirks, which might go back to cultural and alienation issues. However, as I noted earlier, simplistic racial data gives an essentially false picture.
So, again, we need data which tell us about
(a) racial/ethnic differences - white itself may be too broad in fact, hiding other differential rates.
(b) address different levels and types of urbanization/non-urbanization as I believe it is accepted that rural populations generally have lower crime rates (reported, whether that means a reality of lower crime, I don’t know)
© address regional differences, e.g. higher crime rates in North East generally?
Without these kinds of controls we have shit for data. Garbage in, Garbage out.
However, I disagree with wring that this is utterly fruitless. The data in the end may be problematic, but it might reveal interesting patterns.
Hi, Serlin.
Friggin simulpost. Obviously I wasn’t talking to you, Collounsbury.
the patterns may indeed be interseting, but probably shouldn’t be used as a predictor. The OP doesn’t suggest that is the intent, but the existence of racial profiling currently suggests that should data be developed which suggests one or another trends, despite your concern and caution about the data being problematic, it would probably be used to ‘profile’.
Front line officers have quite a bit of leeway -they can sometimes attempt to talk the person into either filing an official report or not for example. Certainly in the ‘big ones’ (murder for example), I would agree that it would be statistically insignificant amounts of murder would be glossed over by a front line cop.
However, when it comes to simple assaults, thefts, robberies, b & e’s, etc, there’s quite a bit of leeway they can offer. The field of study on domestic assaults suggests this concept - I’m sure you’re familiar with it. and this sort of thing would be extremely difficult to control for in a study, and would provide the ‘garbage in’ portion of your ‘garbage out’ point.
Unless you have some way of controlling for skewing in reporting and clearance rates for the crimes, I fear that your resulting data may be too flawed for practical use. And, of course, it would probably be used.
I’m not necessarily against the development of the data, though I’m fairly certain the data does not exist today. I just doubt that a clearly defined, highly regulated, quality controlled study would be done - the cost would be substantial.
While I agree with you Collunsbury in everything you say, including the unsaid but obvious point that Blacks are no more liable than any other race to commit crimes, the pressures facing them are somewhat unique. Similar to the large Chinese community on the West coast, which still preserves their lifestyle, original culture, language and traditions deep within itself does so because of peer pressure.
The difference is that Black people living in a poverty cluster cyclically reinforce negative behavior as the normal status quo. On court TV, not too long back, part of a Black to Black lawsuit was that the Intensely Black woman had problems with her Black boyfriend because he refused to ‘act Black’ and her friends made negative comments about it.
It is a known condition that many Blacks who decline to act or speak ‘Black’ get ostracized by many of their peers.
Look at most of the Black entertainment, which portrays Blacks as tough criminals, heroic, misunderstood gang members, rich people who still ‘act Black,’ kind of ‘Beverly Hillbillies’ style, the portrayal of drug dealers as rich, powerful, influential people living a life of excitement, respect, and fun, which looks good.
According to the mass media, which has an astonishing influence on everyone, the average Black man carries a gun and uses it at every opportunity. On the average, when I rode with officers, we found 3 of every 5 young Black males stopped carried a gun. The percentage dropped sharply when we stopped Black males who were going through the higher levels of college, who did not dress the Black gangster part, or act the ‘Black Street’ part. Drugs were found on them at the same ratio as young men of every other race.
The only difference being, they tended to carry small amounts of crack or coke, while more Whites carried grass. Admittedly, that could simply be due to the local preferences. We arrested more Whites for DUI than Blacks, because of booze.
When you are in an environment where criminal activities are both accepted and a status symbol, problems happen.
I’ve seen similar things among closely knit poor White communities of years past, but with much less internal violence. They tended to beat each other up, but casual killings or shootings were rare. In the poor White communities, it was ‘Them,’ meaning everyone else, against ‘Us.’
Not surprisingly, the same amount of obese, mouthy fat women were found in poor White community clusters as are in poor Black community clusters, but there were less obese males than in poor Black community clusters. I think the heavy tendency might be genetic. Similar morality traits were found in the Poor White Community Clusters along with the mixing with Poor Petty Criminals of all races within the cluster.
The major difference was and is, mouthiness. Blacks are very verbal about any perceived slight, where in the Poor White Communities, this was hardly done on such a large scale.
The major problem as I see it, is that many people absolutely to accept any disclosure of influences upon Blacks as valid. The topic is such a hot potato that it seems any form of study is going to be called biased, bigoted or racial unless it is done by a Black person. Even then he or she will promptly be accused of ‘whining and trying to pass the buck to Whites’.
By the way, a little historic reading will give you close similarities between blacks and several other races, including whites, and nationalities who were highly discriminated against in the last 200 or so years.
As Straight Dope’s self-appointed Lone Black Poster®, I feel compelled to point out a few things.
-
The question as currently written is leading and too broad. A better way of phrasing it would have been, “Which group is statistically more prone to commit crimes: poor African-Americans or poor whites?” Rather than find data that immediately answers Yes/No, you’re more likely to compile data first.
-
About Amedeus’ link – “The Color of Crime”. That’s not a study. It’s flawed sensationalist racist propaganda masquerading as accurate scientific inquiry. Panders to the same crowd that bestows legitimacy to THE BELL CURVE and limits their exposure to African-American culture to Sammy Davis, Jr. singing with the Rat Pack. Ignore it.
3)Who?26 - I’m afraid some people might read your comments and infer that the violence endemic to black racial separation is unique to poor blacks, when it’s not. ANY intense intraracial separation can produce the climate you describe: it’s called xenophobia. It’s just worse and more pronounced when people live in poverty. I’ve seen it here, in South Carolina, among the (relatively affluent) Irish Travellers of Aiken; the Gullah communities in the sea islands off Charleston; in the few Edisto Indians families living in Orangeburg County; in the state prison. I could substitute “white” for “black” in your statement – “Race Traitor” for “Unce Tom”, and “Southern accent” for “Ghetto slang” – and have an approximate statement applicable to poor whites.
- As usual, I agree with 95% of Collunsbury’s assessments. But does urbanization skew the incidence of crime, as he says, or merely the reporting of those crimes. Because what urbanization may bring in terms of incidences and opportunities for some crime (esp. murder, theft, robbery, assault, etc.) rural and suburban living can exacerabate the incidence of other crimes (domestic violence, school shootings, incest and molestation, hate crimes, etc.) Note: as a rule, rules committed in a private home go unnreported much more often than other crimes.
Who?26: In your second post, you echo a lot of the same things I just mentioned about the simularity of self-segregated communities of poor whites and blacks and other races. I’m glad you posted your insights yourself.
I postulate that ‘casual killings’ aren’t casual in the sense you mean, but the consequences of transgressions. I don’t hear the word diss being used as much anymore, but the consequences of being dissed come out of some really foul notions of manhood. They’re more apt to be part of a generational difference of young black males born since (plucking year out of thin air) the mid-70’s – and the rise of the drug culture. More than heroin, marijuana, or possibly even alcohol – the trafficking of crack cocaine rasied the incidence of death in these communities.
BTW, your assertion of ‘mouthiness’ – the notion that blacks are verbal about any perceieved slight – while I can vouch for it, it is ANOTHER instance of something only being culturally prevelant in the last 35 years or so. Such mouthiness in the early 60s and prior got you fired, beaten, driven out of town or killed. The media broadcast various Civil Rights Leaders being elooquent and articulate – the masses joined the bandwagon, less so.
After looking around for a bit, I noticed it was the only link I saw that had information of that sort. It sort of dawned on me that the information in question was perhaps in error or biased. But thanks for the insight. 
Gracias.
That too occurred to me, I kinda raised the issue obliquely above. In any case, one has to, in order to get some kind of statistically valid and comparable data, control for this, regardless of whether the source of the bias is greater reporting or greater actual incidence.
(Ruadh, I understood. Serlin can’t suppress himself can he?)